Statement by Ron DeHaven, Administrator, Animal and Plant HealthInspection Service

January 3, 2005

"Yesterday, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed that anolder dairy cow from Alberta, Canada, has tested positive for bovinespongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The infected animal was born in 1996,prior to the implementation of Canada's 1997 feed ban. No part of theanimal entered the human food or animal feed systems.

"USDA remains confident that the animal and public health measures thatCanada has in place, including the removal of specified risk material(SRMs) from the human food chain, a ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban, anational surveillance program and import restrictions, combined withexisting U.S. domestic safeguards and the additional safeguardsannounced as part of USDA's BSE minimal-risk rule announced Dec. 29provide the utmost protections to U.S. consumers and livestock.

'The extensive risk assessment conducted as part of USDA's rulemakingprocess took into careful consideration the possibility that Canadacould experience additional cases of BSE.

"According to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) guidelines,a country may be considered a BSE minimal-risk country if it has lessthan 2 cases per million cattle over 24 months of age during each of theprevious 4 consecutive years. Considering Canada has roughly 5.5 millioncattle over 24 months of age, under OIE guidelines, they could detect upto 11 cases of BSE in this population and still be considered aminimal-risk country, as long as their risk mitigation measures andother preventative measures were effective.

"USDA will continue to work closely with CFIA officials as theirinvestigation into this situation progresses."

Transcript of U. S. Farm Report, Town and Country Living Year-endinterview with Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman As Aired January 1,2005 on RFD-TV

snip...

"Obviously my time has been spent in large part on continuing on the BSEcrisis that we encountered."

MR. SAMUELSON: "That happened just before Christmas a year ago."

SEC. VENEMAN: "Exactly. And after our interview, there we were, the cowwho stole Christmas, December 23rd. And we've spent a lot of timeworking through all of the issues-- increased strength of ourregulations, implementing animal ID, implementing an enhanced testingprogram. There's been a whole host of issues we've had to deal with. Andthat's taken a lot of time.

snip...

"MR. SAMUELSON: "Finally, back to BSE for a moment. You mentioned animalidentification. Are we making progress on that program?"

SEC. VENEMAN: "Absolutely. We are working closely with states andorganizations to implement premise ID, individual animal ID, and to putit into a national database. Obviously this is a voluntary program as weget it up and running, but we expect over time that it will become amandatory program that will allow us to trace back animals in the eventof a disease outbreak, particularly of disease like foot and mouthdisease where it spreads very, very quickly, and it's important toquickly be able to see where the animals have gone so that we can seewhere the disease might spread."

snip...

"The other day is December 23, 2003, the day that we discovered we hadour first case of BSE. And we then of course had to deal with the cowwho stole Christmas. And that took up a lot of what we did all of thisyear in terms of implementing the programs in the aftermath of that."

MR. SAMUELSON: "But I give you high marks -- the cattle industry and youas Secretary and your staff -- because we didn't go through thedifficult times that the Canadian growers went through."

CALGARY, Alberta -- The Canadian government said further testingconfirmed that an Alberta cow was infected with mad-cow disease,bringing to three the number of Canadian cattle diagnosed with thedeadly brain-wasting disorder. However, U.S. and Canadian authoritiesunderscored that the development won't derail U.S. plans to lift a19-month ban on imports of young Canadian cattle.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture official said late Sunday that thepositive test won't affect the U.S. agency's plan to start accepting inMarch Canadian exports of live cattle younger than 30 months. That planto open the border to live animals was announced last week, just one daybefore this third suspected North American case of mad-cow emerged.

As long as Canada has measures in place to prevent the disease-causingagent in mad-cow disease from entering the human and animal food chains,"it shouldn't be a problem," USDA spokesman Jim Rogers said in aninterview. He said the agency took into account the possibility thatCanada could discover more infected cows when it conducted a riskassessment to consider lifting the ban on cattle imports. Marc Richard,a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said the infectedeight-year-old dairy cow was born on an Alberta farm in October 1996,about a year before Canada and the U.S. banned from cattle feed anyprocessed remains from cattle or other ruminant animals. Before thatban, it was common practice to feed animal renderings to cattle. Mr.Richard said the infected cow probably contracted the disease by eatingcontaminated feed before the new feed restriction, introduced to try toprevent spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, also knownas mad-cow disease.

Mad-cow disease spreads primarily among cattle that ingest infectedmaterial from the brains or spinal cords of other dead cattle or relatedruminant animals, such as sheep or goats. Humans may also contract afatal disease similar to BSE if they eat contaminated beef.

The Canadian agency said that no part of the latest infected cow enteredthe human food chain or animal-feed system. It said the positive BSEdiagnosis doesn't indicate an increased risk to food safety, as Canadarequires the removal of brain and spinal-cord tissue -- the so-calledspecified-risk material that can contain the infective BSE agent -- fromall animals entering the human food supply.

Many U.S. ranchers are objecting to the Canadian animals, though. TheRanchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, aU.S. cattle-trade group representing ranchers, says the finding showsthat the USDA is moving too quickly to relax its ban on Canadian cattle."Obviously Canada has a BSE problem," a spokesman said. "We need to belooking at how to strengthen our resistance against BSE rather than torelax our standards that have thus far protected U.S. citizens and theU.S. cattle industry." The group plans to ask Congress to oppose thedecison of the USDA.

But Dennis Laycraft, executive vice president of the CanadianCattlemen's Association, representing Canadian ranchers, said thatSunday's confirmation of the sick animal wasn't unexpected and reflectedimproved surveillance and testing for the disease in Canada. "As weimprove these things, we remain optimistic that we'll see a gradualopening up of markets," he said.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reported Thursday that preliminarytests indicated possible BSE contamination in an Alberta dairy cow thathad been segregated and slaughtered as a "downer" animal, that is, oneunable to stand. Samples from the dead animal's brain were sent to alaboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for further tests that confirmed thedisease. The agency said it is continuing its investigation into the case.

Mr. Richard said the cow most likely became infected by consuming cattlefeed containing remains of infected cattle imported from Britain, priorto the 1997 feed restrictions. The United Kingdom had a severe outbreakof BSE in the 1980s and 1990s, involving more than 180,000 infected animals.

The U.S. banned all imports of Canadian cattle and beef products in May2003, after Canada found its first indigenous case of BSE on an Albertafarm. The U.S. lifted import restrictions on some Canadian beef productsthe following August, but the ban on live-cattle imports remained in place.

Write to Tamsin Carlisle at tamsin.carlisle@wsj.comand Janet Adamy at janet.adamy@wsj.com

Parts of cattle supposedly banned under rules enacted after the nation'sfirst case of mad cow disease are making it into the human food chain,according to the union that represents federal inspectors in meat plants.

The National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, which representsmeat and poultry inspectors in federally regulated plants nationwide,told the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a letter earlier this monththat body parts known as "specified risk materials" were being allowedinto the production chain.

The parts include the brains, skulls, spinal cords and lower intestinesof cattle older than 30 months. These body parts, thought to be mostlikely to transmit the malformed proteins that cause bovine spongiformencephalopathy, or mad cow disease, were banned from the human foodsupply by USDA officials last January.

The union based its Dec. 8 complaint on reports from inspectors inseveral states, though it declined to say which ones.

It said that the inspectors found heads and carcasses of some cows onslaughter and processing lines that were not always correctly marked asbeing older than 30 months. That age is the cutoff for rules governingthe use of higher-risk materials in human food; any animal older than 30months must have any such parts removed before it can be cut up into meat.

But plant employees responsible for checking the age of cattle were notalways marking each older carcass. In the course of their regular work,inspectors on the processing lines checked cattle heads themselves andfound some from older animals that had been passed through unmarked.

"We couldn't determine that every part out of there was from a cow under30 months," Stan Painter, the union's chairman, told MSNBC.com. "Therewas no way to determine which one was which."

The government and the beef industry frequently point to the SRM ban, asit is known, as the single best measure to ensure that any meat possiblyinfected by mad cow disease is kept out of the human food supply. Theban was enacted this year after the first U.S. case of the disease wasdetected in a Washington state dairy cow in December 2003.

Research has shown that most of the risk from infected animals lies inneural tissue, such as the brain, not muscle meat. Mad cow disease hasbeen linked to a related human disease; both are always fatal.

USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said the ban was working, as were age checkson cattle. "We feel very strongly that this is being done," Cohen said."It's being done correctly, and it's being verified by the people whosejob it is to do that."

Federal oversight for the age checks is usually performed by offlineinspectors — usually a more senior inspector at a plant who handleslarger issues such as food safety plans. They are directed to performspot checks on plant employees who perform the age checks usingpaperwork as well as indicators such as the growth of the animals' teeth.

But current oversight would cover a small fraction of the total animalsthat pass through any given plant — just 2 percent to 3 percent, by theunion's estimate.

In its letter, sent to the head of the USDA's Food Safety and InspectionService, the union also reported that some inspectors were "told not tointervene" when they saw body parts of some older animals, sent forpacking with those of younger animals. This is despite exportrequirements for certain parts that have been set by U.S. trading partners.

Specifically, the union said, kidneys from older animals were sent downthe line to be packed for the Mexican market, which prohibits them fromcows over 30 months. When the inspectors complained, Painter said, "Theagency basically told the inspectors, 'Don't worry about it.'"

Cohen said the age checks, which are usually performed before slaughter,are meant to be handled by supervisors and veterinary medical officers."It is not the online inspectors whose role it is to determine" ananimal's age, Cohen said.

"The inspector on the line's role is to look for disease," he said. "Ifan online inspector feels as though something is not being done theyshould talk to their supervisors."

The online inspectors performed the checks on their own amid concernsthat older animals were not being marked as such, according to the unionand to an attorney familiar with the matter.

The cases referenced in the letter were apparently reported tosupervisors and to USDA district offices, Painter said, but theinspectors were told, "Don't worry about it. That's the plant'sresponsibility."

The union has not yet received a response, he added. Cohen said theagency would have a response soon, and noted that the department'sinspector general is auditing how well plants comply with the ban.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6738982/

Greetings,

WITH all the lies and PR control the USDA et al do, it's no wonder consumerconfidence is high. IF the consumer knew the truth, i don't think itwouild beso high...